In her book, Nixon in China, Margaret MacMillan quotes Dr. Henry Kissinger on his meetings with Mao Zedong.

"Later on, as I comprehended better the many-layered design of Mao's conversation, I understood that it was like the courtyards in the Forbidden City, each leading to a deeper recess distinguished from the others only by slight changes of proportion, with ultimate meaning residing in a totality that only long reflection could grasp."

The Forbidden City … courtyards and a deeper recess … ultimate meanings and long reflection - yes, the very Heart of Darkness Joseph Conrad had led us into, the same one Francis Ford Coppola revived in Apocalypse Now, and the very French surrender to a psychotic romanticism contained in Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver.

Mao, however, described Kissinger as "that silly man."

The intellectuals of Post-French Revolutionary Europe, quintessentially represented by Kissinger, have for over two centuries stood before the Symbols and the Gods of Death, in the same way the not-so-good Doctor stood before Mao, shaking with the vapidly throbbing heart of a "silly," American bobby soxer.

The only aphrodisiac for Dr. Kissinger, as he has admitted, is "power". That power means to him an indifference to human life might account for the long list of "crimes against humanity" which the profoundly intellectual Christopher Hitchens has been charging Kissinger with for years.

Seventy million dead, Chinese victims of Mao's Great Leap Forward and his Cultural Revolution, is the figure even Ms. MacMillan is willing to accept as historical fact. She has been repeatedly drawn to the most serpentine of world gatherings – her previous successful book was Paris, 1919, a record of Europe's first exploitation of America and Woodrow Wilson's faith in humanity. She is determinedly drawn to scenes of American Naiveté at its worst and most costly (although I doubt if she connects the Roe v. Wade decision to Maoist China in the same way I do - or, perhaps, as a possible "Progressive," she considers the Maoist Population Control Victory an "improvement"). And she is obviously obsessed with the "many-layered" menace of French Diplomacy, American Earnestness and Maoist ground-breaking evil.

Nevertheless, Dr. Kissinger is, as I have described him in an earlier editorial, the Twentieth Century's Greatest Courtier, and his sycophantic tribute to the mind of a mass murderer is the essence of Progressive Diplomacy.

Now, I am, as another former Secretary of State, Dean Acheson, might have described me, a "Political Primitive." In short, I do not believe in the "moral ambivalence" within all of life. I realize that denies me the questionable joys of wallowing in an examination of all the "good things Mao Zedong did for China". However, the price of 70 million human beings, beaten, terrorized, starved to death and executed, is an exorbitant fee from any man, or any would-be God for that matter, who promised China a government that would, could and still is terrorizing the remaining, billion-footed Chinese and the rest of the human race.

With Roe v. Wade as the ultimate condition for good relations with Red China, America gained the questionable reward of being able to talk to Beijing, give away Patriot Hats to them, and show them off in the Rose Garden any time she pleases.

Now that the United States no longer has any Declaration of Independence left, nor an "inalienable right to life," the Beijing Politburo must be profoundly amused by the American visitors, such as Hillary Clinton. She choose to slap Red China's wrist for "human rights infractions" while she and her husband have turned legalized abortion into their own political Lamborghini, and driven that pro-choice, political sports car into Presidential and now, with Clinton's Global Initiative, Imperial Power. A major American network, ABC, collapsed before Emperor Clinton's demand that one of their films, revealing the Clinton Administration's mistakes regarding terrorism, be cancelled. Not even President George W. Bush had the gall or Executive Right to do the same with his Hollywood critics such as Michael Moore and Bob Baer.

However, with Clinton's Coup d'Empire, we're up to what Kissinger would call real power, global influence, and apparently Ms. MacMillan, like Dr. Kissinger, finds such aphrodisiacs irresistible.

"Greatness is the only beauty," declared Napoleon.

That such "greatness" never necessitates even one ounce of goodness in it explains why so many Third Millennium College and University graduates have accepted the notion that Adolf Hitler is in heaven.

Catholic Progressive Gary Wills, now says Judas should be canonized a Saint! I expect his female version in Congress, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, to herald the baby-killing Medea of Ancient Greece a role model.

We are lost in the heart of darkness, have turned five thousand years of Greco-Roman-Judeo-Christian History and Civilization upside down. The idea of intellectual supremacy that was born in the French Revolution has torn through the protective walls of American Democracy. With the Nancy Pelosi Progressive Congress the greatest nation in the world has become a doormat colony of the United Nations. They carry no more weight or resolve than a complaint box in which the Progressive Performing Artists, such as George Clooney, can be used to convince the still naïve Free World that there is some good faith left somewhere.

The heart of darkness is a Forbidden City for good reasons. What begins as "moral ambivalence" at Beijing's city limits turns into Maoist Evil by the time you reach the Deadly Buddha's Throne Room.

Michael Moriarty is a Golden Globe and Emmy Award-winning actor who starred in the landmark television series Law and Order from 1990 to 1994. His recent film and TV credits include The Yellow Wallpaper, 12 Hours to Live, Mary Christmas and Force of Impact. Moriarty is also running for President of the United States in 2008 as a candidate for the Realists Party. To find out more about Moriarty's presidential campaign, contact rainbowfamily2008@yahoo.com.